Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Hypoparathyroidism is characterized by hypocalcemia and low or inappropriately normal levels of PTH. The most common cause of hypoparathyroidism is iatrogenic due to anterior neck surgery. In recent years it was documented that vitamin D insufficiency is widespread.Aim: To investigate the cause of hypocalcemia in thyroidectomized patients with PTH within the reference range.Methods: Retrospective review of clinical re...

Introduction: Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors (TKIs) are approved for the treatment of several cancers and can induce hypothyroidism by unclarified mechanisms.Objectives: To assess the prevalence of hypothyroidism in patients treated with TKIs.Methods: Retrospective review of clinical records of patients treated with TKIs in our institution between 2003 and 2009. We evaluated parameters such as sex, oncologic pathology, TKI used, TSH an...

Introduction: Procalcitonin (PCT) is currently used as a sepsis marker. Studies have shown that this prohormone is elevated in patients with medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) and, additionally, that its assay could have less limitation than calcitonin (CT).Objective: To evaluate the concordance between the values of CT and PCT.Methods: CT, PCT and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) were measured in a total of 57 subjects. CEA and CT we...

Prolactin is mainly found in the monomeric form although it can also occur in the big-PRL and bigbigPRL (bbPRL) form: a complex of prolactin and immunoglobulin G. The latter has reduced bioactivity despite maintaining its imunorreactivity. This can cause false positive results representing the main cause of interassay variability in prolactin measurement. It should therefore be considered in every study concerning hyperprolactinemia. We aimed to evaluate the prevalence of bbPR...

Introduction: Thyroglobulin (Tg) measurement in needle washouts from fine-needle aspiration biopsies (FNA-Tg) increases the sensitivity of lymph node (LN) metastasis diagnosis in differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC). However, the cutoff value for FNA-Tg has not been clearly established and there are large differences between clinical studies, which hinders its interpretation. Our study aimed to investigate the optimal cutoff value of FNA-Tg and evaluate its utility in the diagn...